Tuesday, 30 October 2012

For
many, literature has very little role, if any, to play in enhancing or
contributing to national development. So much so that those who argue or think
in this vein do not see the necessity of devoting time and resources to the
study of literature or even reading literary works for the sheer pleasure and
delight they offer the reader.

It’s also partly the reason why a ready dichotomy has been created between the
arts and the sciences, with those inclined towards the sciences being denied
both the humanising and liberating resourcefulness in language mastery,
cultural education and re-education, and value-orientation that novels, plays,
short stories and poems offer readers.

Consequently, Nigerian society has become very philistinic or anti-intellectual
in tenor, with poor results being recorded yearly in national examinations as
rewards for the anti-reading malaise. Indeed, it is why a vast majority of
young Nigerians are on a steady march on the path of illiteracy even when they
are still in school.

These were some of the issues that came to the fore on
Tuesday at the on-going Garden City Literary Festival organised by the
Mrs. Koko Kalango-led Rainbow Book Club at Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt,
Rivers State. It was Day Two at the festival that brought writers from Nigeria
and all over the world to celebrate literary ingenuity. The festival comes to a
close tomorrow.

The event was a seminar session held in conjunction with the Association of
Nigerian Authors, Rivers State chapter, with the topic ‘Literature and Women in
National development’; it was moderated by the association’s chairman, Mr.
Obinna Nwodim. The three-woman panel included a lecturer at University of
Education, Port Harcourt, Dr. Chinyere Agabi, ANA Rivers treasurer, Mrs. Ekaete
George and Mrs. Nneka Joyce Duru. They took time to both restate the crucial
role literature plays in national development and how a robust, rounded
portrayal of women in literature plus women actively writing to correct
negative portrayal of women, can make for a society that is able to reshape the
values of its young ones so as to impact society positively.

Duru’s argument captured the essence of the seminar debate when she opined that
“women are the culture-bearers of the nation”, with Agabi also noting that
society’s humanising values are best imparted to the young through Africa’s
age-old folk narratives in which are embedded values and virtues that have long
nurtured the African soul, but which are currently in danger of being lost due
to modernisation that has no space for such once-cherished pastimes.

She, however, foresaw a challenge for city women in this regard, saying they
might be handicapped in not being able to tell their young ones a good folktale
as was also her case. To overcome such challenge, Agabi said she had to
formulate tales to tell her daughter, who constantly upbraided her for not be
able to retell the same story right a second time.

What could be done, Agabi further argued, was for parents, particularly women
or mothers, to try as much as possible to record or write down these folktales,
as she was to learn from her own daughter who would rather listen to a folk
narrative than be read to from a written text. For the three women, the
closeness of women or mothers to their children is key to facilitating a
re-orientation of social values through narratives that morally edify and
reknit the fabric of society away from the corrupting tendency so prevalent
today.

So, Agabi argued that through fiction such as her recent work, The Survival and other ones, “Women
are able to tell children about things that are valuable in society; women can
talk about values that shape children’s lives. In female writing, you find
forced marriages, peer influence, female circumcision, laziness and also things
that can change wayward behaviours. It’s important to highlight the things that
impede social growth of children and amplify those that enhance it”.

One way to do this, the university don stated, was to give the girl-child a
ready access to education, even compulsory education, up to secondary school
level, so she could discharge her role better in society by imparting better
values to her young ones. She noted that women were badly challenged by the
scourge of illiteracy, which a free education could easily mitigate.

For Duru, literature offers a bridge between women and power. For her
literature is not only beautiful and a breath of fresh air, but that it gives
the woman the all-important “notion of self-awareness, self-realisation,
awareness of her constitutional rights and how to contribute socially,
economically, culturally and politically to her society. Literature can spur a
woman into going onto higher ground; help a woman to break down social shackles
that hold her down. Literature helps her know her rights and for her to be
confident to shape her life and to live her life the way she wants it to be”.

She
further argued that women writers should write positive things that should help
the girl-child to grow up morally and strong, with awareness of who she really
is as a human being that has relevance in her society.

Away from the seemingly negative and docile manner some first generation
writers portrayed women, today’s women writers have begun to give equal
credibility and roundedness to female characters in fiction to counter such
negativity. One of the panellists, Mrs. George sued for continuing positive
portrayal of women in fiction so that a balanced view of women could be
presented like Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa and others did in their works as
counterpoint to what Chinua Achebe and other male writers did in their early
works that relegated women to positions of servitude in society.

George stated, “In Nigerian female writing, we began to see how women impacted
society positively to emerge from the position they found themselves and became
productive members of society. Women should be presented in positive light, in
a position of strength as co-creators and social engineers. Nigerian male
writers didn’t portray women right, but the women eventually came to tell
women’s stories the way it is; men talked about the way they perceived women,
but women talked about strong, aggressive women, who are socially and
economically strong. Such stories helped to reshape women’s psyche and make them
feel they are part of the social and economic development agents of society”.

George also stated that early female writers like Akachi Ezeigbo, Sefi Atta and
Kaine Agary and such platform as Garden City Literary Festival, the brain-child
of a woman, with its 2012 women-centred theme, ‘Women in Literature’, offered
women writers a solid platform for self-expression so that feminine issues
could be brought to the fore for discussion and evaluation.

Also for Agabi, the pervasive use of social media by youths could be another
avenue for female writers to explore to reach a large number of young ones
through seizing the internet instrument of social media and bombarding such
traffic with value-oriented materials so that youths consume wholesome content
and not some of the trash currently on offer. She suggested the possibility of
a section in social media devoted entirely to healthy literary content for
young people.

A participant, Ozoma Amara faulted claims that Achebe presented only docile
women in Things Fall Apart. He argued instead that strong female
characters like the priestess of agbala exist in the novel, stating that
presentation of female characters is only situational and not necessarily
deliberately to denigrate. Another sued for closer ties between child-mother
relationships as a way of entrenching strong cultural values in children,
saying also that “women should mentor other women to help in the continuing
enhancement of women’s power”.

In her own intervention, Prof. Molara Ogundipe (now teaching at the University
of Port Harcourt after a few years’ sojourn in Ghana) stated that African
societies were not only known for negative practices such as human sacrifices,
female genital mutilation and maltreatment of women but that positive values also
abounded. She stated that in spite of eroded values, Nigerian students still
performed excellently in schools abroad as a result of the strong values they
had imbibed at home.

For women who keep whining about balancing office work with managing the home
front, Ogundipe said the African woman had always worked in traditional
societies, especially in farming, trading or fishing and contributing to the
economic, cultural and even political wellbeing of societies, which she
effectively combined with managing the home. She added that there was a need to
examine women’s contributions back then in the farms and now in the offices.

A strong campaigner for women’s rights, Ogundipe tasked women to think of
themselves first as human beings, who have certain rights and privileges before
seeing themselves as women. “What makes women not think of themselves as human
beings?” she asked. It’s because they live in patriarchy! And women are
trained, conditioned to support patriarchy”, even when patriarchy degraded women.

Ogundipe
charged men to shed the notion of patriarchy and regard women as co-partners in
society. She also noted that morality needed not be viewed only in the prism of
sex, with women always being seen as the offenders, but that morality should be
seen in more encompassing context of ethics, hard work, excellence and absence
of corruption that African males have so perfected to stunt the continent’s
growth. She also noted that a new reading of Things Fall Apart sees it as a novel
about manhood and womanhood, especially with Okonkwo going into exile in his
mother’s place because he beats his wife during the week of peace that
eventually culminates in the tragic event that sent him into exile.

The iconic gender, author and literary critic reiterated her call for a more
generational dialogue to be held between the older and younger generation of
Africans as a means of bridging whatever gap Western civilization has wrought
to disrupt Africa’s moral tenor that has caused disruption in the
socio-cultural fabric of society. She also re-emphasised her call for the
teaching of indigenous, African languages to the young ones so that African
values could be better transmitted down the line for a continuum of African
wholesome cultural values.

The 5th edition of Garden
City Literary Festival (GCLF) 2012 organised by Rainbow Book Club had the
promotion of women and women issues, especially from the literary point of view
and their impact on society, as its main focus. With ‘Women in Literature’ as
its general theme, this year’s festival gave women writers and critics of
feminine issues long-sought sparing opportunity to re-examine some contentious
issues in men and women relationships, especially those of equal rights that
have continued to dodge both sexes for ages.

On Day Five of the festival, the topic ‘Women and love in
African literature’ came up for discussion, which held at the Banquet Hall of
Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt. With foremost literary critic and university
teacher, Prof. Charles Nnolim as lead discussant, the stage was set for an
explosive engagement. Nnolim also brought with him a baggage of witticism to
bear on his submissions. Others on the panel were Prof. Julie Okoh, Dr. Julie
Umukoro and Mrs. Sophia Obi, with Mazi Uzo moderating.

While giving a general overview of the subject matter,
Nnolim noted that the word ‘love’ is the most abused word in the English
language, saying its application could sometimes be absurd, like saying, ‘I
love you’ (to a woman); ‘I love my mum’; I live yam’; I love my pet’ and so on.
For the classical Greeks, Nnolim said ‘love’ had three broad meanings: ‘Agape’
– love of God or divine love’; ‘Philos’ (philosophy) – love of knowledge and
‘Eros’ – romantic love or the love between man and woman. Nnolim also traced
the history of romantic love in ancient Greece and Western literature, taking
into account Paris’ abduction of Helen that caused the infamous Trojan War that
lasted 10 years with disastrous consequences for the Greeks and Troy.

In the same vein, Nnolim said fantasy, illusory and romantic
love from the West became the stuff Onitsha Market Literature was made of,
which he said is un-African, saying, “In Onitsha Market or Pamphlet Literature,
love is mainly sexual, forgetting that sexuality is not love, for one can
engage in sex without love”.

Nnolim concluded that romantic love in Western literature is
equated with madness as it acts without reason and often in extremes. However,
the erudite critic stated that love in African literature, and indeed, love in
African setting is usually regulated “by a set of life’s realities and
practicalities such as taboo, mythology, polygamy, high bride price, ethnicity,
the caste system” among others.

He also noted, “Love in African tradition is always meant to
end in marriage and procreation. And in the marriage, many factors control
excesses or fantasies about love such as co-wife jealousies, childlessness, the
abiku or ogbanje children for those who are fecund, bearing only
daughters in a son-hungry society, plus the caste system”.

He cited such works as Flora Nwapa’s Efuru (mythology), Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine (mythology), Onuora Nzekwu’s Wande of Noble Wood (mythology), Mariama Ba’s So Long A Letter (polygamy and male philandering), Isidore Okpewho’s The
Victims (co-wife jealousy), John
Munonye’s Obi (childlessness),
Chkwuemeka Ike’s Toads for Super
(ethnic origin) and Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease (caste system) as examples. He, however, noted that
Africa’s educated women usually find it problematic to fit into African concept
of love, as they are imbued with European-type love that is romanticized and
glamourized, saying this usually brings conflicts in marriage, especially in
polygamy, where the man is not responding with equal zeal.

Nnolim concluded his submission thus, “While love in
European literature is idealized, romanticized and depicted as ‘tragic
madness’, love in the Nigerian, nay African soil, is more practical, more
pragmatic and less chivalric; it’s more cautious, more mundane, more
earth-bound, more rational and less glamourized because it is controlled and
stabilized by its fundamental unique existence”.

FOR Prof. Okoh, a dramatist
and gender activist, there was a need to look at the causes of love ending
disastrously in African literature, and queried, “Are the men giving love back
to women the same way women give them? If men love or return women’s love, will
the world not be peaceful? It’s the same pattern of unrequited love recurring;
women are crying so that men and women can live happily. For women writers, men
should slow down and live together happily”.

Okoh further argued that polygamy was no longer necessary in
the 21st century and wondered why African men still held on to it. She noted
that the conditions that favoured polygamy in previous ages like economic needs
that required many hands for the farms were no longer in existence, saying the
economic system had changed to that of machinery and automation.

But Umukoro, another gender expert, took a completely
different position, one that could alarm many women, when she affirmed that
polygamy needed not be discounted yet as many ills in Africa society were
associated with its discontinuance as a socially regulating mechanism. Although
she is not in a polygamous relationship, Umukoro further contended that
condemning everything African just so as to embrace European or Western ideas
was wrong. She, therefore, sued for a re-examination of polygamy as a socially
regulating concept for social behavior, noting that so long a set of codes for
its application could be devised, it was all right to encourage it. She further
said modern-day Africans were not practicing monogamy either, with many married
men now having many concubines in place of polygamy.

Umukoro stated, “I look at issues from a global perspective.
We should be talking about African ideology, things that set us apart. Polygamy
is African; there are codes attached to it; then the Europeans came to dilute
it. In those days, there were ethics, dignity, code of conduct to control
polygamy, which, when violated, attracted sanctions. I say to you, we are not
practicing monogamy either; monogamy will leave many women in the lurch,
without husbands.

“We should find out how our forefathers practiced polygamy,
why it worked for them. Most men who claim to be monogamists practice polygamy;
they still keep women outside, a situation that makes the wife back home
miserable as a result. But if you control polygamy, and marshal out how it’s
practiced, there will be no infidelity, which could bring diseases to the
family, like HIV/AIDS”.

But Okoh countered by saying that polygamy isn’t exclusively
African practice, as other societies had also practiced it. She, however,
reaffirmed that time had overtaken the concept of polygamy and that it was no
longer in vogue because of modernity.

Obi contended that while love is a universal thing, African
women felt they have been subdued by the men who see them as domestic hands.
Moreover, a woman protesting such injustice is usually seen as a deviant. She
wondered aloud, “who set up the standards that encouraged polygamy in the first
place? Did the women like it? Were they all right with it? These are the issues
we must examine for healthy relationships to thrive”.

WHILE making further
intervention, Nnolim said the squabble over equality was sometimes laughable as
patriarchy was important and has come to be accepted worldwide. He noted that
no matter how much of a feminist a woman was, she would still bear a man’s
name, as she could not be called, ‘Juliana Agnes’, for instance. He, however,
said the world was tending towards a new theory called ‘accommodationism’ for
the promotion of love and unity within the family, whether monogamy or
polygamy.

He stressed that until the African man began to see the
woman as co-equal, there might be no peace in the home, especially these days
when women have stepped outdoors and were beginning to venture into areas
traditionally the preserve of men. He also stated that city life exercised a
constraint on polygamy, as the means to accommodate many women unlike in the
villages where a small hut was enough to house everybody.

For Nnolim also, the weapon the world has given women is
education, and advised that women should get more and more educated so men
would not look down on them.

But Umukoro still maintained her stance in allowing people
of different persuasions to stick to what works for them. She said as much as
women were against discrimination and support parity, certain social forces
should not be discounted like polygamy, which she stated was deep-rooted in
African consciousness, saying that incursion of foreign religions has
complicated things for the African man.

She summed up, “There are ethics governing society, whether
for Christians, Muslims or animists or traditional religions”, and that one set
of ethics should not “be used to unseat another; we Africans are eclectic. Our
society has not given us a way forward. Christians marry one wife but the men
have side-kicks outside. A lot of things have been diluted. A woman must have a
say in things that concern her life”.

Umukoro cautioned against a myopic view of issues and
advised that since religion was now playing a major role in love relationships,
ethics within a given religion should be allowed to govern such relationships.

Feminine expert and literary critic, Prof. Chinyere Opara
contended that “our society today is as confused as it is sexist”, saying
polygeny (one woman marrying more than one husband, as currently practiced in
some Western societies) was another way of looking at issues. She, however,
argued that ‘feme terrible’, as
recorded in Madam Bovary, where
the woman becomes the tormentor of the man, was another way of looking at men
and women’s relationships.

It started in 1989, but the official registration happened
in 1990, but I had no funding then; but my friends and my husband giving their
time pro bono; and their were many people who believed in this dream of mine, I
felt I had to do something even without the funding. There were people who were
giving their time who believed in it. I said even if I have to do something on
my own, I couldn’t do it without the funding. Then I started sending out
proposals. And we did a research; we didn’t just started out blindly, if there
was an audience that would sustain this work, how much material were there to
the production, who are the people who are the people who have been doing
business with Africa? Let’s start with them. And we did very neat packaging.

Within a short period I began to get responses, some saying,
‘Your proposal is very brilliant and interesting, but unfortunately we are able
to be of help’. Before I opened most of the letters, I already knew the answers
from the feel. Then one day, the guy at the Lincoln Centre, who had accepted to
co-present it with us by donating the pace and expertise and all that; he said
to me, ‘don’t be discouraged; don’t give up now’. And then one day, their
Development Director told me, because what had happen was that between 1990 and
1992, they were always seeing me in their office; so, they thought I was one of
their students at Columbia University because the guy also took part time
prorammes. So, the Film Society of Lincoln Centre became our co-presenter of
this huge inaugural festival that everyone was talking about but we hadn’t
found money, and no one knew.

So one day, they got a call at the Film Society of Lincoln
Centre asking about us although unbeknown to me. The Development Director woman
there, who raises funds asked her boss, ‘who the African Film Festival’. Then
she called me to say although she’d seen me coming to the centre, but that she
didn’t know who I was, but that the Ford Foundation called asking to know who
we were; she then asked if I was collaborating with the Lincoln Centre and I
said yes. She hung the phone up on me and demanded to know from her boss what
was going on.

That was how the Ford Foundation gave us backing; they
didn’t promise much, but that was how we got our first seed money. Then the
Rockefeller Foundation came on board. For me, it was just how I approached it;
I researched deeply about it; everything we did, we did to the best of our
ability. We researched our culture; we researched policy on culture at every
level. So that together with the quality of our presentations endeared us to
people across board; so, in our own little way, I’m proud of what we’re doing.
I think what impressed those foundations were that we had done our research
thoroughly; in the presentation, they saw the right things. I had on board all
these different volunteer lawyers for the arts under the not for profit
umbrella; I just had my baby then; I just walked around with my child;
sometimes, I had her on my back in the middle of New York and people were
amazed at us.

And I met all these people who believed in what we were
doing. I guess in my other life, I must have been a huge gambler and I must
have been good at it. And the hand, I probably was a big politician from Africa
who had come to correct all my past sins.

Now, do you have a
filmmaking background? How did the idea come to you?

Not at all; I was born before independence in Sierra Leone
and my parents were very active in that political process of transition from
colonial rule. My father, and when you think of that generation of politicians
and that of today, they were gentlemen compared to what we have today. They
were nationalistic; they were educated; they had a sense of both the
traditional and the formal education. So that was the period they brought me up
in, the respect of the self and respect of the extended family. I mean, I
listened to my dad speaking to paramount chiefs about the need to change from
colonial system to independence and how they would go about managing all the
mines. I saw all of that.

My retention of what happened; and every holiday, we would
be taken to the south of the country to experience what life was there. To this
day, I ask fir their forgiveness because I didn’t appreciate them enough when
they were around; I’m who I’m because of them, you know.

So by training, what are
you?

By training, I
basically studied communication, and then administration. I’m what you might
call jack of all trade! I did administrative studies, then media ecology that
talks about new technology. Then I went to advertising for a while. After a
while, I met my husband who was involved in the art trade and I sometimes help
out in cleaning the artworks. And then at some point, I decided to do this. I
was always someone who had a soft spot for culture, and New York is a sort of
cultural playground for diversity. And I have that opportunity to express
different cultures. And then I love the cinema; at lunchtime, I’d go watch a
film alone. I’d just sit all by myself and watch a film.

When you set out, what did
you intend to achieve with the African Film Festival?

The goal is to use it for communication, African cultural
identity and dialogue. The goal is be able to provide as a platform where
African people can rediscover, revisit something about ourselves. First and foremost,
I think we need to revisit some things in Africa, and the power of the media in
film, the accessibility of it is key. And we are amazing story-tellers, and we
can tell about who we are, where we’re going, where we’ve been through the
cinema. The cinema has become our recorder; we didn’t record much about
ourselves; because of our oral tradition, we didn’t record much. The cinema
plays that role because it becomes the gatekeeper of our memory.

So far, how would you rate
what you have done with the festival in promoting African consciousness?

I think someone else has to do that! I want to say I keep
doing my best; but you know, you keep raising the bar higher. I’m proud of what
we’ve done, but I think you’d have to ask someone else; someone else who has
seen our programmes would have to rate us.

Coming to Lights Camera
Africa Film Festival!!! in
Lagos seems to be one of the outreaches of your festival, to partner with
promoters of African films. Could you tell us more about it?

We’ve had a longstanding association with festivals on the continent.
We’ve done a lot with FESPACO in Burkina Faso and SITENGIS in South Africa; and
others who organise film festivals in Uganda, Ethiopia. In fact recently, I had
an amazing intern, who works in the area of preservation. It’s not that I’m
rolling in money, but this guy was so fantastic and because he was getting
credit for his internship, he couldn’t accept any money from us, but we gave a
stipend because he did amazing work in our office. Then I said if he could buy
a ticket to FESPACO, I’d hook him up to go work with FESPACO.

And when he went there, the people at FESPACO didn’t want
him to return. In that sense, it’s a give and take. I have his opportunity, you
know; FESPACO is like the father of it all; they are huge. We need FESPACO, no
matter what. We need it. When this festival came on, and it’s being done by
women –Ugoma and company - I jumped at it. So, for me that was the biggest
challenge. I said, ‘we can do it’. Nolywood is a non-cinema, but it’s about the image, but that
is important; and it would always have its place.

I’ve seen quite a bit of Nollywood, and it’s good. We used to see something of Samora
Machal, Tafawa Balewa in docu-cinema in those days. And then it died out. It
can only get better, I mean, the production value of Nollywood.

If you were to advise,
what possible direction would you want African cinema to go for it to make
impact?

I would say that we should develop our own audiences
locally, nationally and continentally. I think we should develop the audiences
as much as we can because the young generation is doing a fantastic job. Five
to 10 years from now, we’re not going to recognise our continent; the
disillusion some of us felt is changing; this continent is changing. There’s a
renaissance taking place, and I want to be part of that.

Why has the black image
remained largely a marginal one even in Hollywood movies?

Why do you think I’m started doing this festival thing! I
used to spend my lunch hour watching movies. I’m offended by a lot of what I
see, the two dimensional characters. I’m like, ‘this is not what I know’ of
African people. And even when black people go to the movies and laugh, I feel
they are being insulted; even now there are very few movies I go to see; they
have very few good things to say about us – American films, Chinese films,
South American films, European films. What they show of blacks is not my
reality, you know; I don’t know those people. This is why when people see how
people are portrayed, say in Nollywood films, it’s like eating good food, you just eating that good food; you
start feeling something good about you.

You said something earlier
about Africa changing, the renaissance going, yet you can’t but cast your mind
back to the continent’s politics that has caused several wars like it happened
in your country, Sierra Leone and other places till date. Do you still see
optimism, a bright future for the continent?

I can still speak
of Sierra Leone; I’m a guest of Nigeria, so I can speak bad about her. In
Sierra Leone, I think there are two paralell units that exist – the people are
just emerging fully from that war and navigating their way to the light and
that of the political unit. Those children of the war are now adults of their
own. As for the politicians, we have to be true to ourselves and talk about
corruption in Africa. It’s so embarrassingly disgusting. Even in Western
societies, politicians are thieves. But they still build their countries while
they are stealing. Their thoughts are on, ‘oh my God, I have to leave a legacy;
what sort of legacy am I leaving behind? Even if I steal half, let me leave
half of it for infrastructure, for education, for health’.

In Africa, it’s just so crude; there is a crudeness to it
that is disgusting. I think our presidents should try to clean up our houses;
we really need to. It’s embarrassing. I’m not saying that in my father’s time
it didn’t happen. But those guys were the educated class, who had a sense of
proportion, a sense of patriotism, a sense of pan-Africanism.

And you know, Sierra Leone
has always had a long relationship with Nigeria. But most importantly for me
was that when the war happened in Sierra Leone, Nigeria did a lot to help. But
then the UN moved them out and put Kenyans; then things got bad. They should
have let the Nigerians who know terrains to continue the keeping the peace.
Anyway, that is history now, isn’t it? But we owe a lot to Nigeria in that war.

Monday, 29 October 2012

In tune with the theme of
the 5th edition of Garden City Literary Festival (GCLF) 2012, the play Evil
Blade by the late playwright, Amatu
Braide, was presented by the Institute of Arts and Culture, University of Port
Harcourt. It was Day Two of the festival and guests from Britain, South Africa
and Uganda were just warming up to yearly literary feast.

Directed by a professor of Theatre and gender expert, Prof.
Julie Okoh, the play resonated with the ever-changing social realities of
modern day African society, especially with a heavy dose of influence from
outside the continent. Also, the choice of Evil Blade as festival play perfectly amplified the festival’s
broad theme, ‘Women in Literature’ that put women on centre-stage.

With an all-female cast, the dance drama piece was total
theatre presentation that highlighted the plight of women in the face the
menacing traditional practice of women circumcision in Africa’s patriarchal
society, a practice foisted on women by men for reasons too hollow now to
believe. The play highlighted the many evils and socio-cultural conditions
women have had to endure for centuries: female genital mutilation (FGM)! While
the practice is gradually easing off through education and enlightenment, it
dies hard in some parts of the continent where it still remains a scourge.

With its well-choreographed movements, songs, dances and
deft acting, the evils of female circumcision were brought home to the audience
inside the Banquet Hall of Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt. Ironically, the
play also puts women are at the centre of the perpetuation of the evil
practice, whose origin stems from men’s efforts to curtail women’s sexual
expression. Indeed, fearful that women’s sexuality might cause disruption in
social behaviour, men then devised a means to suppress and rein in women’s
libido by causing them to be circumcised.

To authenticate this blatant fraud on women, men invented
all excuses to hoodwink women into being the ones to wield the blade with which
they chop off the sensitive genitalia that ordinarily affords a woman as much
sexual pleasure as a man. Another myth invented to keep the evil tradition of
circumcision is that should the head of the infant touch the vexed tissue or
clitoris at birth, such child would die. Indeed, maintaining society’s sexual
health from exploding in the face of men, it is also argued, is the reason
offered for the practice; this was tellingly brought home to the audience.

But the hollowness of these reasons has long come to light
and women are taking none of it any more, having seized on modern
enlightenment, education, medical expediency, advocacy and even feminine
militancy combined with a measure of intellectual disputation. These are
women’s weapons to fight what has come to be seen as patriarchal fraud.

Evil Blade took
the audience through the various tricks and harrowing consequences of
circumcision practice that has crippled many women emotionally, having hampered
their sexual urges, causing them pain that often led to Vagina Vesicular
Fistula (VVF), infections from unsterilised blades used in circumcision, the
incidence of HIV/AIDS in certain cases that result in death.

Called to question were the malefolk that require the
practice, the older women who demand that their daughters or daughter-in-laws
get circumcised and, who are also saddled with the ungainly task of
circumcising their kind.

For these crusading women, the traditional practice is a
social aberration that hurt women and which must be stopped by using all the
tools of enlightenment, education and advocacy at their disposal. While the
bible, for example, prescribes circumcision for men at the age of eight, men
have come to prescribe it for women essentially as a weapon to control and
subjugate women and so find ready excuse to keep them in their harems simply
for their pleasure.

So, the women argue that circumcision or not, whichever
women will be prostitutes or ashawo
will be prostitutes or ashawo and
that the practice has nothing to do with a woman’s waywardness or decorum.
Collectively, they affirm the abolition of circumcision as a means of saving
the lives of their daughters from the evil blades that dangerously clip a
woman’s clitoris and her emotions, with its attendant unpleasant, fatal
consequences.

Considering the urgency of the subject matter of Evil
Blade as an advocacy play production,
it’s message has far wider application and should also be presented in remote
villages and communities where circumcision rites still hold sway. It’s a play
that should be appropriated for enlightenment across the country. The Ministry
of Information and the National Orientation arm of the Ministry of Culture and
Tourism could work together to take the play further afield for the message to
be taken to the grassroots to enlighten rural folks amongst whom the practice
is still deeply entrenched.

That way the creative genius of the late playwright, Braide
could be better put to use in highlighting one of the plights women face in a
patriarchal society where the rule of male folk is supreme. Now, however,
Braide is suing for accommodation and a place for women so they could exercise
their fundamental rights of gaining sexual freedom through the abolition of
female genital mutilation!

Unarguably, patriarchy, the
practice of male authority and control in society, with women perceiving
themselves to be at its receiving end, has been blamed for the continuing
denigration women suffer in African societies. At its best, patriarchy seeks to
take away women’s voices and render them of little value than their male
counterpart, with the attendant effect that women’s rights are denied them in
preference to men’s.

Last week at the 5th Garden City Literary Festival (GCLF) in
Port Harcourt, the issue of women involvement in literature, especially as
writers, took centre-stage. With the theme, Women in Literature, the stage was set for women to rise up and stake
their claim to long-denied privileges as defined by male-dominated African
societies.

The women discussants included University of Science and
Technology teacher and gender expert, Prof. Chioma Opara, who chaired the
discussion, Prof. Onyemachi Udumukwu of Department of English Studies,
University of Port Harcourt, Ugandan writer, Doreen Baingana, one of Nigeria’s
youngest and newest authors, Chibundu Onuzo (author of The Spider King’s
Daughter) and Cote D’Ivoire writer,
lecturer at University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and keynote speaker,
Veronique Tadjo.

Interestingly, it was Rivers State governor, Rt. Hon. Rotimi
Chibuike Ameachi who put matters in their proper perspective when he submitted,
“Call it what you like, those (women) who write have been hurt by society.
Buchi Emecheta wrote as though she was fighting with society. It’s clear that
literature cannot divorce itself from society. You either belong to the people
or the ruling class. Look at Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa’Thiong’o; what did they
write? Achebe’s A Man of the People
is a replication of political life after independence…”

Amaechi, who also studied literature and is inspirational in
Rivers State Government’s sponsorship of the festival, GCLF, said women writers
joined the fray as a result of the imbalance of feminine portrayal in men’s
writing where women always wore the tag of subservience and mere objects that
could be seen and not heard.

Amaechi, who has long found Achebe’s grim political novel
written in 1966, A Man of the People,
as his own political manual, insisted that the novel has remained key in his
understanding of political behaviour on the continent. For Amaechi, therefore,
while the first republic politicians failed as Achebe records in his novel, his
counterpoise and a sequel to A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, which ushered in military government, reveals the
sham of military rule.

But while the woman in A Man of the People, is used as a mere stool for satisfying men’s
pleasure, Achebe responds to have listened to female critics that his treatment
of women in his previous novels was stereotypical. So, he elevates Beatrice,
the heroine in Anthills of the Savannah to a pedestal of prestige. But Amaechi still contended that sex was
not an issue in Nigeria’s political arena, as both sexes have failed in being
able to manage the nation’s huge oil resources, saying that it had more to do
with whether you belong to the ruling class or the ordinary masses.

Earlier, keynoter, Tadjo had wondered whether there was such
a thing as female writing, what the role of African writer is, who an African
writer really is and what globalization has done to African writing and if
globalization should cow African writers. She, however, affirmed the reality of
female writing, with the deluge of theoretical constructs they have employed to
describe what their writing, which is intended to achieve in the big fight to
rescue women from the stranglehold of traditional patriarchy that denies them
their basic rights as human beings.

So, such terms as feminism, motherism, womanism, to Akachi
Ezeigbo’s snail sense feminism, to
Molara Ogundipe’s ‘Stiwa’ or Stiwanism’ (Social Transformation Including Women
in Africa), to nego-feminism (that is, feminism through negotiation, with
society, with men) and several such other terms. Tadjo argued that these were
valid means through women have made a case for patriarchy to make room for
women for self-expression.

Tadjo, however, stated, “Whatever
content we give to the word and its variants, the bottom line is that it will
always be relevant to the female condition in Africa. Women should have the
same the same rights and opportunities as men and in this domain, a lot of work
still needs to be done. The struggle of women to take their lives into their
own hands and to be independent-minded, is part and parcel of our literary
history. It is also one of the defining qualities of women writing.

“Let’s
be clear: women do not want to become men. They simply want to have the same
rights as men. However, since this is still denied to them in many countries,
they must continue to affirm their presence as women. But their final objective
is for their difference, that is to say, their womanhood, to be fully accepted
in their societies”.

She concluded thus: “As time goes by, it is my contention that the perceived
difference between men and women writing will shrink. Already, a growing crop
of African women writers has departed from the conventionally “feminine” themes
of love and domesticity, (though we will agree that “the personal can be
political”) to tackle subjects like war, genocide, exile and history, with some
of those who have gained international stature, including Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie, Sefi Atta and the late Yvonne Vera on the English speaking-side and
Fatou Diome, Calixthe Beyala and Werewere Liking on the French-speaking side”.

On social commitment by writers, Onuzo would rather shun any
form of prescription for writing or writers, although she said it was hard for
a writer to run away from “commitment but to always focus on it is not good” so
as not to lose the essence of art. She also noted, “when engaged in art, you
can create wider messages otherwise, it’s not enjoyable; let the particular
become global”.

For Baingana also, there is no separation of messages from
art, just as social impact cannot be separated from art. She, however, touched
on the issue of identity, with the element of choice being very important. She
said the many variants of feminism highlights how important and seriously women
take their position in African society with a view to changing old perspectives
for new, better relationships with the menfolk in predominantly patriarchal
societies. She contended that the difference between men and women was merely a
social construct that has poisoned normal relationship that ought to exist
between the sexes.

Widely regarded as sympathising with feminism in his works,
Prof. Udumukwu said his interest as a teacher of literature enables him to
examine all writings whether by men or women. He regards commitment as a writer
being answerable to something or society in their writing, saying, “You must
master your craft; you must be committed to your art and not necessarily to
something. A writer must be committed to signature, to be responsible.

He noted, “My interest is to understand women and their
signature – the manipulation of resources, subject matter, the mastery of
language. Most women write from the first person narrative voice as opposed to
the third person, as a device that calls attention to themselves as subject,
and as calling attention to women’s space in society to her existence”.

Tadjo stated that African writers have long expressed
commitment in their writing, starting from Negritude writers to independence
and post-independence writers, adding, “We need something more at the back of
our minds when we live in our kind of societies”. Tadjo also echoed what has
come to preoccupy the minds of most writers on the continent: the absence of
readers! Whatever the disposition of writers to their crafts and societies,
there have to be readers to drive the messages home otherwise it becomes a
futile effort. Absence of robust readers poses a limitation to writing, she
noted.

Self-censorship was a limitation she said that was peculiar
to African women writers, as they are not able to say what they have to say
because of cultural constraints and taboos erected by patriarchy, which she
said encumbered women’s writing.

Prof. Opara put it down to what she called cultural
ambivalence, the many constraints to women’s full self-expression, but which
she called alienation in male writers as a result of foreign influence that has
come to define most writings on the continent.

For young Onuzo, the call to write in local languages is a
bit outdated, noting that Nigerian writers have long adopted a brand of English
that has come to be accepted in the world as a nuance that is unique and native
to Nigeria, which has universal application at the same time.

ALSO, why is it that in
critical canon, African women writers are often left out? Baingana put it down
to a reinforcement of status quo, saying that sometimes criteria used were
suspect. She asked: Who is to determine a good book? The more women get
involved in canonisation, the more things will get better. She also said the
personal narrative voice often employed by women was to give agency to the
female voice that has long been muffled by the male’s, but that it shouldn’t be
prescriptive so as not to lose its potency.

On when an African female writer would win the Nobel Prize,
Udumukwu said the politics of the Nobel has to be examined first, noting that
it was possible for an African ‘woman in our generation’ to win it, just as
women elsewhere have won it. He enjoined women writers to pay attention to
critical structures of writing such as plot construction, characterisation,
style and language, where some women writers have performed poorly in the past,
adding that writers must write well to merit being regarded as such.

On the material condition of writing on the continent, Onuzo
acknowledged the renaissance taking place on the continent and foresees a
bright future for Africa as a place where readership would emerge, just as Europe
had foreseen the death of the novel.

Baingana, however, lamented the absence of “structures to
support literature in Africa” as found in Europe and America, where festivals
such as GCLF happen all the time as avenues for writers to expose their writings
to the public. She noted that the problem of infrastructure needed to be
resolved to lift the continent from its current parlous position.

On the differences between men and female writers, Pa
Gabriel Okara said he was interested in hearing about women and male writers.
He asked, “Can a female singer change her voice to a male voice and vice versa?
Is it possible? They may sing about the same things, say political situations,
but it must be with different voices. If you’re a female or male writer, be yourself
and let the readers or critics talk about it. When I’m writing, I don’t think
about myself as a male writer; and I don’t think female writers should think
about themselves as such. There is no such thing as female or male writing
styles; they may differ but they are doing the same thing”.

Elechi Amadi (author of The Concubines, Estrangement, The
Great Ponds, etc), who has written a
great deal about and on women, noted that half the human population is made up
of women, saying, “Whether we like it or not, there are different ways men and
women think. A great way to enter into the psychology of a woman, into a
woman’s mind is to read her; so, too, she can’t get inside a man’s mind. So,
there are bound to be differences in writing.

“Sexual discrimination is a reality and it has to be
examined. It’s bound to colour a woman’s work, like it was in South Africa
during Apartheid. Women cannot escape the discrimination they suffer in
society; it’s a grim social reality. Take women not being allowed to do certain
things in society, it’s bound to feature in their writing. So, men and women
live in different situations; they cannot write the same way. So, critics
should examine the psychology of women’s writing and come up with a complete
picture of their writing”.

Also, emeritus professor of History, E.J. Alagoa stated how
really proud he was of young author, Onuzo, who recently bagged a first class
degree in History from King’s College, London, who is a historian like himself.
He went on to chronicle women ascendancy in the Niger Delta region, saying they
had been a creative force in time past. Although men now take political
leadership, Alagoa said it wasn’t alway so in the ancient past where renowned
women had previously held sway. A certain Queen Tambassa of Bonny, he said, had
held office and led the island town with great wisdom.

A retired librarian in the audience restated that importance
of readers in the book chain, saying, “If there are no readers, writers will
not be able to write and vice versa. We must put books in libraries. When we
were young, books were much more easily available. Now, there are no public
libraries”. She accused governments of talking glibly about reading culture
without necessarily taking direct action to effect it.

While commending Rivers State Government of building model
schools, she expressed the hope that government would have the presence of mind
to also equip them with libraries where students could find books to read. She
lamented the absence of public libraries in a city as big as Port Harcourt,
saying, “We need to make books available in our communities”.

Dr. (Mrs.) Onuzo, Chibundu’s mother, a medical doctor,
brought a biological slant to the discourse on creative writing when she argued
that all writing should be viewed from feminine prism “because all writing
comes from ideas to fertilization, and then to crystallization like conceiving
a child; men and women are not on different sides but on the same side”, and
should therefore channel their writing towards creating harmony between the
sexes rather than create needless frictions.

Monday, 22 October 2012

For many, literature has very little role, if any, to
play in enhancing or contributing to national development. Those who argue or
think in this vein do not see the necessity of devoting time and resources to
the study of literature or even reading literary works for the sheer pleasure
and delight such exercises offer the reader.

It’s
also partly the reason a ready dichotomy has been created between the arts and
the sciences, with those inclined towards the sciences being denied benefits of
the humanising and liberating resourcefulness in language mastery, cultural
education and re-education, and value-orientation that novels, plays, short
stories and poems offer readers.

Consequently, Nigerian society has become very philistinic or
anti-intellectual in tenor, with poor results being recorded yearly in national
examinations as rewards for the anti-reading malaise. Indeed, it is why a vast
majority of young Nigerians are on a steady march on the path of illiteracy even
when they are still in school.

These
were some of the issues that came to the fore on Tuesday at the on-going Garden
City Literary Festival organised by the Rainbow Book Club at Hotel
Presidential, Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

It was
Day Two at the festival that brought writers from Nigeria and other parts of
the world to celebrate virtues of literary engagement. The festival comes to a
close tomorrow.

The event was a seminar session held in
conjunction with the Association of Nigerian Authors, Rivers State chapter,
with the topic, Literature and Women in National development; it was moderated by the association’s chairman, Mr. Obinna Nwodim.

The
three-woman panel included a lecturer at University of Education, Port
Harcourt, Dr. Chinyere Agabi, ANA Rivers treasurer, Mrs. Ekaete George and Mrs.
Nneka Joyce Duru. They took time to both restate the crucial role literature
plays in national development and how a robust, rounded portrayal of women in
literature plus women actively writing to correct negative portrayal of women,
can make for a society that is able to reshape the values of its young ones so
as to impact society positively.

Duru’s
argument captured the essence of the seminar debate when she stated that “women
are the culture-bearers of the nation”, with Agabi also noting that society’s
humanising values are best imparted to the young through Africa’s age-old folk
narratives in which are embedded values and virtues that have long nurtured the
African soul, but which are currently in danger of being lost due to
modernisation that has no space for such once-cherished pastimes.

She,
however, foresaw a challenge for city women in this regard, saying they might
be handicapped in not being able to tell their young ones a good folktale as
was also her case. To overcome such challenge, Agabi said she had to formulate
tales to tell her daughter, who constantly upbraided her for not being able to
retell the same story right a second time.

What could
be done, Agabi further argued, is for parents, particularly women or mothers,
to try as much as possible to record or write down these folktales, as she was
to learn from her own daughter who would rather listen to a folk narrative than
be read to from a written text.

For the
three women, the closeness of women or mothers to their children is key to
facilitating a re-orientation of social values through narratives that morally
edify and reknit the fabric of society away from the corrupting tendency so
prevalent today.

So, Agabi
argued that through fiction such as her recent work, The Survival and other ones, “Women are able to tell children about things that are
valuable in society; women can talk about values that shape children’s lives.
In female writing, you find forced marriages, peer influence, female
circumcision, laziness and also things that can change wayward behaviours. It’s
important to highlight the things that impede social growth of children and
amplify those that enhance it.”

One way
to do this, the university don stated, is to give the girl-child a ready access
to education, even compulsory education, up to secondary school level, so she
could discharge her role better in society by imparting better values to her
young ones. She noted that women are badly challenged by the scourge of
illiteracy, which a free education could easily mitigate.

For Duru,
literature offers a bridge between women and power. For her literature is not
only beautiful and a breath of fresh air, but that it gives the woman the
all-important “notion of self-awareness, self-realisation, awareness of her
constitutional rights and how to contribute socially, economically, culturally
and politically to her society. Literature can spur a woman into going onto
higher ground; help a woman to break down social shackles that hold her down.
Literature helps her know her rights and for her to be confident to shape her life
and to live her life the way she wants it to be”.

She
argued that women writers should write positive things that would help the
girl-child to grow up morally and strong, with awareness of who she really is
as a human being that has relevance in her society.

Away
from the seemingly negative images that some first generation writers portrayed
women, today’s women writers have begun to give credibility and roundedness to
female characters in fiction to counter such negativity.

One of
the panellists, Mrs. George urged continuing positive portrayal of women in
fiction so that a balanced view of the female could be presented as Buchi
Emecheta, Flora Nwapa and others did in their works. This would serve as
counterpoint to what Chinua Achebe and other male writers did in their early
works that relegated women to positions of servitude in society.

George
stated, “In Nigerian female writing, we began to see how women impacted society
positively to emerge from the position they found themselves and became
productive members of society. Women should be presented in positive light, in
a position of strength as co-creators and social engineers. Nigerian male
writers didn’t portray women right, but the women eventually came to tell women’s
stories the way it is; men talked about the way they perceived women, but women
talked about strong, aggressive women, who are socially and economically
strong. Such stories helped to reshape women’s psyche and make them feel they
are part of the social and economic development agents of society”.

George
also stated that early female writers like Akachi Ezeigbo, Sefi Atta and Kaine
Agary and such platform as Garden City Literary Festival, the brain-child of a
woman, with its 2012 women-centred theme, ‘Women in Literature’, offered women writers a solid platform for self-expression so that
feminine issues could be brought to the fore for discussion and evaluation.

Also for
Agabi, the pervasive use of social media by youths could be another avenue for
female writers to explore to reach a large number of young ones through exploiting
the internet instrument of social media and bombarding such traffic with value-oriented
materials so that youths consume wholesome content and not some of the trash
currently on offer.

She
suggested the possibility of a section in social media devoted entirely to
healthy literary content for young people.

A PARTICIPANT, Ozoma Amara faulted claims that Achebe
presented only docile women in Things Fall Apart.
He argued instead that strong female characters like the priestess of agbala exist in the novel, stating that presentation of female characters is
only situational and not necessarily deliberately to denigrate.

Another
participant urged for closer ties between child-mother relationships as a way
of entrenching strong cultural values in children, saying also that “women
should mentor other women to help in the continuing enhancement of women’s
power”.

In her
own intervention, Prof. Molara Ogundipe (now teaching at the University of Port
Harcourt after a few years’ sojourn in Ghana) stated that African societies are
not only known for negative practices such as human sacrifices, female genital
mutilation and maltreatment of women but that positive values also abound. In
spite of eroded values, she said, Nigerian students still performed excellently
in schools abroad as a result of the strong values they had imbibed at home.

For
women who keep whining about balancing office work with managing the home front,
Ogundipe said the African woman had always worked in traditional societies,
especially in farming, trading or fishing; and contributing to the economic,
cultural and even political wellbeing of societies, which she effectively
combined with managing the home. Ogundipe added that there is the need to
examine women’s contributions back then in the farms and now in the offices.

A strong
campaigner for women’s rights, Ogundipe tasked women to think of themselves first
as human beings, who have certain rights and privileges before seeing
themselves as women. “What makes women not think of themselves as human beings?”
she asked. It’s because they live in patriarchy! And women are trained,
conditioned to support patriarchy”, even when patriarchy degrade the female
person.

Ogundipe charged men to shed the notion
of patriarchy and regard women as co-partners in society. She also noted that
morality needed not be viewed only in the prism of sex, with women always being
seen as the offenders, but that morality should be seen in more encompassing
context of ethics, hard work, excellence and absence of corruption that African
males have so perfected to stunt the continent’s growth.

Ogundipe
noted that a new reading of Things Fall Apart
sees it as a novel about manhood and womanhood, especially with Okonkwo going
into exile in his mother’s place because he beats his wife during the week of
peace that eventually culminates in the tragic event that sent him into exile.

The
notable gender, author and literary critic reiterated her call for a more
generational dialogue to be held between the older and younger generation of
Africans as a means of bridging whatever gap Western civilization has wrought
to disrupt Africa’s moral tenor that has caused disruption in the socio-cultural
fabric of society. She re-emphasised her call for the teaching of indigenous
African languages to the young ones so that African values could be better
transmitted down the line for a continuum of African wholesome cultural values.

Sunday, 14 October 2012

Last Sunday at Freedom Park, Lagos, before the final shortlist of three writers was made midweek, 10 writers faced the scrutiny of the literary public to talk about the work and themselves in the CORA-organised Book Party. The 10 writers included Onuora Nzekwu, (Troubled Dust), Vincent Egbuson (Zhero), Lola Soneyin (The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives), Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani (I Do Not Come To You By Chance) and Jude Dibia (Blackbird). Other writers were Chika Unigwe (On Black Sister’s Street), Olusola Olugbesan’s (Only A Canvas), Ifeanyi Ajaegbo’s (Sarah House), E. E. Sule’s (Sterile Sky) and

Ngozi Achebe’s (Onaedo: The Blacksmith’s Daughter).

However, only Ngozi Achebe’s (Onaedo: The Blacksmith’s Daughter), Chika Unigwe (On Black Sister’s Street) and Olusola Olugbesan’s (Only A Canvas) now stand a chance of winning the US$100,000 prize money of the LNG-sponsored The Nigeria Prize for Literature. Reproduced below at Freedom Park are what the writers said concerning themselves and their novels. Interestingly, only one of the authors, Olusola Olugbesan was in attendance by proxy; eh was represented by his wife, Mrs. Nike Ougbesan. Unigwe and Achebe, who live abroad, could not be present at the Book Party.

WITH Deji Toye moderating, the conversation truly got underway with the seven authors giving insights into their person and their works. First was Vincent Egbuson (Zhero), represented by Steve Shabba, his publisher, who said the work was a true reflection of the many knotty issues confronting Nigeria at the moment – fraud (419), corruption, kidnapping, crime. However, Egbuson’s character is a young man who chooses to remain untainted as he walks the narrow path and eventually climbs to the top in his chosen career. It provides a moral compass through which to navigate through the murkiness that the country has regressed.

Tricia Adaobi Nwaubani traced her writing career to an earlier period in primary school when she won a prize for her writing. However, in 2006, she turned attention to her craft properly and wrote I Do Not Come To You By Chance, a thriller on the nefarious activities of 419. She confessed to living in the world of her book, especially in Aba, Abia State, where the book is set. Nwaubani insisted that she was not being moralistic in her work. Also, she would neither blame government nor those who engage in such criminal activities but instead, she said she uses her work to shine a light on people’s lives and on society with the aim to better understand them.

Jude Dibia (Blackbird) grew up with books. While other children got strokes of the cane as punishment for erring, Dibia had books to read instead as punishment. So, he read authors most adults would struggle to comprehend at an early stage. Dibia’s interest is “Who we are as a people; why is he or her that way? What influences the passion in people to do what they do?” He is also interested in the laws of opposite – beauty and ugliness and such other contradictory forces! Also, his thoughts are about people who are internally displaced rather than those who go outside the country.

Ifeanyi Ajaegbo (Sarah House), who is a basketball fan and player, said there is a merger between his daytime work and his writing to a point where the line between them becomes blurred. Also, he noted that his work is on the objectification of women, especially in Port Harcourt city, where he said women are playthings in the hands of those who can afford them. “60 per cent of what is the book”, he said, “happened to real people, is an extract of what happened to people. In Port Harcourt where I live and work, women are treated like objects, real objects. Despite living in our small spaces, there is a very dark world out there and people need to take care”.

Elder artsman, Onuorah Nzekwu (Troubled Dust) traced his writing career till date and said he was raised up in Kafanchan, Kaduna. His first published work was Wand of Noble Wood in 1961, then followed by Blade Among the Boys in 1962; this was followed in 1964 by Eze Goes to School. He said he publishedEze Goes to School because, although Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and others had written books, nothing had been written for Nigerian children to read up till then.

He said, “All we had were books for European children. So, I thought I should write something about our own surrounding for our children’s understanding”. He also went on to write two other books, one on the way Onitsha lived, entitled Faith of Our Fathers. Soon after, the Nigerian Civil War came and he was forced to relocate to be on the side of Biafra after leaving Nigeria as a civil servant in Nigeria. He became the editor of the famous Nigeria Magazine after the war ended. After the war, Nzekwu said he then put together his experiences during the 30-month long war. The result is Troubled Dust.

Mrs. Nike Olugbesan, who represented her husband, Olusola Olugbesan, attested to her husband’s versatility both in architecture and the arts. She referred to him as a multi-talented man, who also composes music, with a once popular tune to his credit. She said Only A Canvas is a book about society, with a view to correcting the obnoxious osu caste system found in some Igbo communities of South Eastern Nigeria.

Lola Shoneyin said The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives was her first novel to be published after two had been rejected by publishers in London. She said the dejection she felt after being rejected was enough to cripple her enthusiasm in writing but she persisted and the result is the current work for the race for the $100,000 prize money. Emphatically, Shoneyin said The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives was a response to her father-in-law, Wole Soyinka’s play Lion and the Jewel, a play that glorifies masculinity. She said she needed to deflate that masculine image and ego, “a kind of bouncing off on Baroka (the old, extra virile man in Lion and the Jewel), to take away his pride and peacock ego. Well, it’s a nice story for me to write”.

Shoneyin stated that she based her work on a story told her by her brother’s girlfriend when she was14, but of an Igbo polygamous family. Combined with her soft spot for women issues, it’s becomes understandable why Shoneyin took on a subject that always generated heated debate each time it came up for discussion. Last Sunday was no exception, with some congratulating her for seemingly giving men the license to experiment on the polygamy turf.

However, the authors had read excerpts each from their novels before speaking about them to properly set the tone for the discussion.